8 advantages to redesigning your website

We don’t think twice about updating our wardrobe, upgrading to a new phone or redecorating the spare bedroom in an effort to keep up to date with changing styles or functionality – and refreshing your business website should be no different. After all, your business will evolve a great deal in a fairly short period and it’s likely that your website doesn’t reflect those changes.

Whether you’re a large-scale corporation, an SME, ecommerce brand or start-up, the time will inevitably come for your website to undergo a redesign. So, how will you know when the time is right, why is it important – and what will be the benefits to your business? (Spoiler: there are lots!).

How often should your website be redesigned?

Very few websites are perfect. Most will require regular improvement and should be continually evolving to provide a better UX/UI. As well as simply updating pages to keep them fresh and current, this can be achieved by optimising your existing design and analysing certain aspects of your website on a regular basis – SEO rankings and security measures and monitoring analytics for conversion rates.

First impressions are everything, and, using analytic tools, you can check to see how customers are reacting to your current website. if you discover that your site is no longer reaching its maximum potential, indicated by a steep decline in web traffic for instance, then it’s time for a redesign.

However, there’s no standard for evaluating if your website needs a redesign and no rule on how frequently it needs one;  that really depends on the nature of your site, your business and the technology advances in that time – but it should be as soon as it isn’t meeting yours, or your customer’s needs – usually between every 2-5 years.

The importance of redesigning your website.

Your business relies on its identity and if the vision for the business has shifted and evolved, yet your online presence still shows your original brand messaging, then a redesign can help get it back on track, by updating the aesthetics (colours, fonts, imagery) or the content.

After working hard to grow your business and keep your online presence updated, if you find that it’s simply not delivering results, your website probably needs to be built better to drive more of those all-important conversions. Analyse the metrics, measure which areas of the site people are reacting to (or not) - and see what that tells you.

If the overall purpose of the website has shifted – say, you’ve added an ecommerce functionality to the website or multi-language options - chances are you’ll need to redesign it to reflect the new objectives. Perhaps you’ve made some changes to the products or services you offer or some important staff changes, which are not yet reflected on your site. Either way, your website should give your customers an accurate picture of your business as it stands today – you can’t expect visitors to trust an outdated website, so ensuring that blogs and news pages are current is vital. 

As technologies improve and adapt, redesigning your website is a great opportunity to keep up to date, to improve functionality and boost SEO performance, mobile browsing capability and enhance security features – easily achieved through a website redesign. 

Why is updating your CMS important?

A new website redesign also tends to follow with a new CMS – the platform which essentially operates the backend interface and frontend design of a website and which is responsible for the creation, management, distribution and publishing of digital content. A CMS platform helps your website to perform successfully and is designed to make your website management easier. It’s important to keep it up to date to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

8 benefits of redesigning your website.

Rebuilding your website from the ground-up requires a significant investment, but as it’s often the very first point of contact for potential customers, it’s critical in making that first impression. A website redesign is no different to refurbishing a physical storefront or office; it represents the identity of your business and by improving its look and feel, enhancing it with new features, and adhering to industry best practices, it will result in more leads and ultimately drive better business results.

Here are just some of the benefits of a website redesign for your business:

1. Improve conversions of the actions you want consumers to take.

Whether you want to collect a visitor’s email or phone number, drive them to book an appointment, sign up for a subscription or purchase an item, converting visitors is the ultimate goal of any website. But if you’ve noticed conversion rates have been dipping over the past few months, it could be due to a number of reasons: the navigation may be confusing, you’re missing some essential calls to action or the checkout process could be old and outdated. Whatever the case, a website redesign will help to resolve these issues and make your visitors more likely to convert.

2. Opportunity to start again.

As styles and trends evolve and new developments in web technology continue to emerge, the original vision for your website may seem outdated and you’ll want to launch a completely new site. Maybe you’ve seen how a competitor’s site appears more compelling, slick and user-friendly. Learning from previous mistakes by starting from scratch with a brand new website will bring your online presence into the 21st century, help to refocus your brand and promote trust and engagement with a more aligned audience.

3. Brand Consistency.

Your brand is essentially what connects people to the products and services you offer and your website is the shopfront, your corporate online presence. It needs to portray your brand positively and a redesign will prompt you to re-evaluate and strengthen it, to help keep your business relevant, consistent and engaging. And it goes beyond aesthetics - revisit your target market and whether the website reflects your brand mission and values and use the opportunity to adapt the tone of voice in your brand messaging if necessary.

4. Update for new functionality and technology.

New website technology is emerging all the time and by updating your website, your customers will benefit from an improved user experience – through enhancements to the functionality of the site, its speed, SEO, security and responsiveness.

5. Helps to keep your business relevant

A good business website should accurately and consistently communicate your mission and keeping it fresh will prevent it from becoming stagnant. Updating it with well-executed, useful, relevant, and up-to-date information is key in attracting new visitors and retaining existing users – and maintaining that all-important competitive advantage.

6. Improve user experience

You have between 10 and 20 seconds of a user’s attention before they decide whether to stay on your website or leave. Your users will expect your website to do exactly what they need it to do and it’s all too easy for your potential customers to go elsewhere if they don’t quickly get what they need from your website.  By redesigning your website you can re-evaluate strategies to keep visitors’ attention longer, while generating new prospects and revenue. Use the latest plugins and navigation features to improve the UX by creating intuitive navigational structures, signposting key content and giving visitors clear calls to action. This will help reduce bounce rates, increase retention and ultimately boost sales leads.

7. Improve for Mobile Responsiveness

There’s no excuse these days for a website not to be optimised for seamless mobile browsing and one that is easy to navigate on a phone with a mobile menu, whether it’s achieved via a stand-alone mobile version of your site or one that is coded with responsive or adaptive design. In the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8 percent of global website traffic – a statistic that makes mobile responsiveness an extremely compelling reason to redesign your website. It is also increasingly important to maintaining or improving your rankings in search engines.

8. Easier implementation of content

Content is the foundation of every website and as soon as a site is live, clients want to feel in control of updating their service or product pages or creating and publishing blog posts. There’s little excuse these days for content management to be onerous or confusing and if it is, then a web redesign can help resolve that. At Yoyo, we build websites on Umbraco’s CMS platform, whose user-friendly admin interface makes uploading content and editing and maintaining client websites very simple, even for non-technical users with basic browser skills.

Conclusion

At Yoyo we understand that good business websites take time and money to design and build, but we also know that having a robust, attractive, flexible online presence can make all the difference when it comes to converting website traffic into meaningful customer engagement or sales.

As a Umbraco development agency, we don’t believe in a ‘one size fits all’ approach which is why clients have come to us to create and deliver a bespoke website, fit for the future.

Staying relevant and competitive lies at the heart of any successful business; if your website is looking a bit unloved, running slower than it should, lacking mission-critical functionality – or it’s simply not giving you the sales opportunities it should, get in touch to find out how we can help.